They're Devilish!

Naturally I'm talking about Deviled Eggs, a staple hors d'oeuvres at Southern parties (and who knows, maybe elsewhere, too). The great thing about Deviled Eggs is that you can make them in advance and have them ready to pop onto a table, no heating required. Oh, and they're delicious and look pretty, too.  I'd been planning to make these to serve at my birthday for a while, and while out one day with Lovely Assistant Jen, I promised her mom that I'd get the recipe up on my blog. So here it is!

What You'll Need

Supplies

Large pot                                                                    Cutting board

Slotted spoon                                                              Fork or whisk

Large bowl                                                                 Egg plates (enough to hold 36 halves)

Knife                                                                           Decorator's bag *

Ingredients

18 large eggs                                                              1/2 tsp hot sauce

White vinegar                                                             Worcestershire sauce

4 tsp spicy brown mustard                                         Salt

2/3 cup mayonnaise                                                   Pepper 

1 Tbsp onion powder                                                  Paprika

Now Let's Make Deviled Eggs!

Start by placing your eggs gently in your large pot. Fill the pot with enough water to cover the eggs and then some. I usually put enough water to be an inch over the eggs.  Place the pot on the stove and turn the heat on high. Add a generous dollop of white vinegar to the water; this will help prevent the whites from seeping should the eggs crack while cooking.  Bring the water to a boil.  As soon as the water boils, turn the heat down to maintain a rolling boil (about medium-high) and cook for 15 minutes.  

As soon as the timer goes off, remove the pot from the heat. Quickly, but gently, remove the eggs using your slotted spoon and transfer them to your large bowl.  Fill the bowl with cold water and set aside to allow the eggs to cool.  It will be much easier to peel the eggs when they're no longer hot.

When you're ready remove the eggs and begin cracking their shells. If they're still warm, run them under cold water for a second first. Begin by tapping the egg against a hard surface, rotating so that you get multiple spots on the surface of the egg. Then, sandwich the egg between the surface and your palm and gently roll the egg around applying very light pressure to crack the entire surface of the shell.  Repeat for all the eggs.  One at a time, begin peeling the shell away from the egg.  I recommend doing this under running cold water. This helps with the shell removal. Set the eggs aside as you finish.

Using a sharp knife with a clean edge (not serrated! We're slicing not sawing here), slice each egg in half along the length of the egg.  Over your large bowl, separate the egg yolk from the egg white.  To do this, gently run your fingers around the part of the white surrounding the yolk, barely pulling it away from the center. The yolk should fall out easily.  Let the yolk fall into the large bowl, and place the white curved side down in a slot on your egg plate. Repeat this process for all the eggs.

Set your egg plates full of whites aside for now.  Measure out 4 tsp spicy brown mustard, 2/3 cup mayonnaise, 1 Tbsp onion powder, and 1/2 tsp hot sauce and add them to your egg yolks.  Now the rest of the ingredients are added to taste, so the following amounts are approximations.  Add about 6 shakes of Worcestershire sauce, 1 tsp of salt and lots of pepper. Whisk everything together with either a whisk or a fork. Try to get as smooth a texture as possible without any lumps of egg.  (That second photo is just plain appetizing, yes? Click to enlarge!).

Yes, I had an explosion.
Yes, it got everywhere. 

Now, a word of caution, if you're going to get fancy (and I tried, I really did), go ahead and run the mixture through a blender or food processor. You will not be able to get all the lumps of egg broken up by hand.  This is fine if you're simply going to spoon the stuff into your eggs and be done with it, but if you're going to pipe the mixture into your eggs you don't want any clumps to clog the tip and cause problems.  Why is that you ask? Because then you have to stop every five seconds to unclog or, well, see the photo.

Anyway, my kitchen adventures aside (I assure you much hilarity ensued, especially since I managed to splatter myself as well as the table cloth), I did manage to pipe out all of my eggs (like the kitchen ninja I truly am).  Insert your piping tip into the decorator's bag and spoon in the egg mixture. Seal the end of the bag and pipe the egg mixture into the hollows of the egg whites by lightly squeezing the large end of the decorator's bag. You'll want to heap it in so that you have little mounds; there'll be plenty of filling, trust me.  Once you're done piping, sprinkle paprika onto each of the deviled eggs. Try to concentrate the paprika over the filling if possible.  

Om nom nom!

If not serving right away, chill in the refrigerator until you're ready to serve. Make sure to proudly display your deviled eggs in a proper egg plate. And most of all, enjoy!